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Carol equips her gaming rig with an Intel CPU, the i5-3550P to be precise, a 4-core 3.1Ghz chip. She pairs that with a Radeon HD 7850 with 2GB of DDR5 RAM and another 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM for system memory.

RAM-BO

Let’s take a look at the memory first. In the PC set-up, we have 8 gigs of common DDR3 RAM, but Sony has somehow crammed the same amount of GDDR5 RAM into its PS4.

GDDR5 is primarily used in graphics chips. It’s not something you see used as system RAM at all.

For instance, the nVidia “Titan” GPU, which costs $1000 by itself, has just 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, and that’s still all reserved for the GPU. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any PC with GDDR5 plugged directly into the motherboard rather than sitting on the graphics card. This just isn’t how PCs work at the moment, though that will likely change.

GDDR5, while suffering from slightly higher latency, offers a substantial bandwidth boost over DDR3, and given the make-up of the integrated CPU/GPU chip in the PS4 this will translate to a substantial performance boost.

One Chip to rule them all

Next up we have the CPU/GPU configuration.

Again, what Sony has done with the PS4 is something that PC builders simply cannot do yet. PC’s come with two separate chips connected over a PCI-E chipset.

The PS4, on the other hand, houses an integrated CPU/GPU custom AMD chip—the “Jaguar” CPU is not available for purchase yet and the GPU side of the equation is said to be similar to AMD cards running in the $200 price-range. The secret weapon here isn’t either the 8-core CPU or the GPU, but rather how the two are paired.

Both the processor and the graphics card are built into the same chip and both tap into that 8GB of DDR5 memory at once—it’s a “unified memory” setup as opposed to the system your PC uses, with the CPU utilizing your DDR3 system memory and your GPU harnessing the more robust GDDR5.

What does this mean? Basically it means that the two chips will be able to communicate with one another much faster and more efficiently than in a traditional PC set-up. Combine this with the high-bandwidth GDDR5 memory and the fact that much of the traditional CPU tasks will be offloaded to the GPU, and you have a machine that you simply cannot compare to a modern PC.

Windows? We don’t need no stinking Windows

One expensive component I didn’t notice on Carol’s list was the operating system.

While you could go with a free Linux build, to get the most out of a gaming PC you’ll want to spend on a Windows install disc. You can still buy Windows 7 and you could probably find an OEM disc for around $99. But the costs of running Windows aren’t all monetary. Unlike a PC, the PS4 won’t need to bother with all those pesky PC applications. There will be no anti-virus software running in the background. A console is a closed system with all the benefits (and limitations) that entails.

In other words, what you can do with the PS4 hardware on a console is not the same thing as what you can do with the same, or similar, hardware in a PC.

This rule applies to game development as well. Consoles may be under-powered compared to their PC cousins, but they have advantages in terms of uniformity that make them very developer friendly. Developing games for a uniform system is a huge advantage over the PC market with its wildly diverse array of price and power points. Again, this convenience does come with its own set of disadvantages. In a few years, the PC will be much more powerful than the PS4, for instance.

The PS3 was no walk in the park for game development, but with a move to x86, Sony is making it much easier for developers to work with their platform. Standardization will also make it easier to port PS4 games to PC.

Finally, we don’t know what type of hard drive the PS4 will come equipped with. Will it be a traditional spindle-based drive or an SSD? Perhaps a hybrid solution? This, and the optical drive, will be the real performance bottlenecks in the system and in the PC you could theoretically build to compare it with.

The fact is, no matter how you slice or dice it, you can’t build a PC with the same specs or performance as the PS4. You could almost certainly build something faster and more powerful, but it will cost you more than the PS4 is likely going to cost.

None of that matters, however. PC gaming is great, but I’m a big tent guy. I like the participation of multiple systems in the market, and the PS4 will be a great competitor for the next generation of video games. The most important thing the system will have to offer will be its games.

There will be many PS4 exclusives that will only play on that machine. If you want to play those games, it won’t matter how amazing your gaming rig is—just like the PS4, however high-powered, will not have access to the entire breadth of titles available on PC.

Show me the money!

Either way, the console will almost certainly cost you less than a comparable gaming PC. Analysts are saying that $299 is the “magic price point” for the system, but I’m betting we don’t see under $399 at launch. That would still empty your wallet less than a gaming rig. Will it make the PS4 a money-loser for Sony?

Actually, I doubt it. Unlike your gaming rig, Sony’s CPU/GPU combo chip is much cheaper to manufacture. The heating solution for one chip is also cheaper, as is the fact that no operating system overhead exists. Indeed, all the parts—save for the RAM—should come at a pretty reasonable price. I’m not sure if Sony is taking a loss, but from what I’ve read it doesn’t appear to be the case—or at the very least, the loss won’t be dramatic. Then again, we don’t know the price of the machine yet, so this is guess work.

I can’t argue in favor of a system that hasn’t yet released, but I do think it’s important to note just how structurally unique the PS4 will be compared to its PC counterparts, at least for the time being. Not better, necessarily, but certainly different enough that any comparison is basically apples to oranges.

The good news for PC gamers is that this technology is likely coming our way as well, and we’ll undoubtedly see much more powerful configurations than anything in the PS4. But even if that future is rapidly approaching, it isn’t here just yet.

Update: Just to clarify, I’m not at all suggesting the PS4 will out-pace gaming PCs—though for the price (depending on the price) it may still make sense from a cost perspective. Nor am I suggesting that an APU is brand new to the PS4. Yes, integrated chips have been used in mobile computing, in laptops, etc.. No, this particular chip has not, and to my knowledge we have not seen an APU built to this spec before. I also realize that GDDR5 RAM is higher latency than DDR3. But it’s also higher bandwidth, so there’s a trade-off, and I suspect Sony has a very good reason for this. The fact is, as this post is attempting to point out, the architecture is different and we won’t really know what that means in terms of performance until we actually have systems to try it out on. PCs will still be better machines in the end, especially if you are willing to pay. And yes, as I say below, the PC will be more future proof as well.

But when people say they can build a PC with the same specs as the PS4, I simply must disagree. You can build one with better specs, but you’ll certainly pay for it. The PS4 is not a dream machine, and we’re not going to pay dream machine prices for it. Consoles will not be able to keep pace with the PC, and so it’s up to game makers to make compelling games for these systems. So long as the basic hardware is there—and I think it is—that’s the real crux of the matter. A console, by its very nature, is going to have to balance cost against performance. But they still have some distinct advantages (i.e. uniformity) of their own.

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I genuinely cannot believe that this article somehow managed to be posted most of your arguments are literally flat-out wrong GDDR5 does have more bandwith, but it has much larger latency making it next to useless when applied to task that would normally be handled by a CPU, oh and by the way the G stands for graphics, and theres a reason for that, not to mention that GDDR5 is just modified DDR3 RAM Next you state, outright and as a fact, that there is currently no possible way to have both a CPU and GPU on one chip, well guess what buddy, theres something called an APU, or accelerated processing unit, and guess what? its both chips combined onto the same die, and these have been in the game for years now So then why dont we do away with the silly multiple chip design and all use these amazing APUs? the same reason you wouldn’t want a vet performing open heart surgery on you, they do different things different ways I can go on and on talking about major holes in your article, like the amount of heat that would be produced by using a shared heatsink, and the problems that would arise from that (think the old RROD), or how underclocked the whole system is, but to save us some time and stop a few extra flame wars from arising, ill cut it short at that and leave saying only that you should have at least done some fact checking, literally any at all would have greatly improved the article, hopefully plugging some of the major holes in your arguments

I hate misleading articles like this. He makes it sound like the ps4 is the strongest pc ever made. The gpu for the ps4 is 1.84 tflops. The strongest card out there is 4.3. Now optimization will bring that up a bit since you can do more hat tricks when you are developing everything with one graphics setting for the exact same machine. Based soley on gflops, you could get a card of equal power years ago. So while it is true that you can’t build a ps4 (you probably never will be, gddr5 will never be used as system) you can very easily build a system that compares to it.

It’s more of your title being misleading. You can’t consider anything about PC hardware as “next-gen” because the upgrades in hardware happen too frequently. Next-gen only applies to consoles because they stagnate and aren’t able to be upgraded.

Well PC and Consoles both have different requirements when it comes to hardware. Consoles are designed around certain limitations which they make the most out of and while the technology is impressive if you compare the performance side by side with a PS4 and high-ish end gaming PC and the difference is most likely null.

Consoles need to manufacture at a massive scale so you are going to approach designing hardware with constraints you just wouldn’t see with PC. You are also going to think in terms of console longevity and cost effective manufacturing. The technology is most certainly different but you seem to give the PS4 credit for being more advanced when its just different technology being used.

PC is a constantly evolving platform and to say the PC isn’t next gen is just silly since it doesn’t have generations.

The fact is these technologies like combined CPU/GPU isn’t even necessary on the PC platform. A standalone CPU/GPU will always perform better than combined but once again the console has certain restraints it has to work around.

That said the specs of the PS4 are pretty impressive for a console. It’s definitely progression but it still always have that console limitation which just comes with the territory.

That’s not my intention. My intention is actually to say that the hardware is just different—and that this is likely where a lot of the tech of the future is headed (APUs, etc. even in desktops.) I could be wrong about that, but I’m not suggesting that the PS4 is somehow technologically *superior* to PC.

You’re not suggesting that the PS4 is somehow technologically superior to a PC…

The title “…why sony’s next console is truly next gen and your pc isn’t.”

APUs are a long way off from being the choice for performance in desktops, and I mean several years.

Dude, just admit you reworded the Sony press release and you really have no idea what you are talking about. The reason I keep replying is not because my feelings are hurt for bashing PCs, but because it is painfully obvious you don’t know the basics of computer engineering.